Couple Attempts to Seize Bank of America's Furniture, Computers

Florida homeowners Maurenn Nyergers and her husband paid for their home in cash, and never took out a mortgage, so when Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the house, they took the bank to court, and won. And when Bank of America wouldn't pay their legal fees — as it was ordered to by the court — their attorney, Todd Allen, decided to seize its assets, in person, with movers and sheriff's deputies in tow.

Threatened by Allen's instructions to "remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers," the bank paid up after about an hour, though one imagines the sight of the nervous bank manager was almost payment enough for a foreclosure defense attorney like Allen. ("[T]his is sweet justice," Allen says.)

(But! It should go without saying that as deeply satisfying as this kind of vengeance is, it's distressingly rare compared to the experience of the Nyergerses and other victims of the shady foreclosure practices perpetrated by Bank of America and its rivals as Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article on Florida's special foreclosure court demonstrates.)